I think these programs are incredibly important to helping
newcomers get involved in free software. And I am especially a
supporter of the Outreach Program for Women. I have a number of
friends who are women who I deeply admire for their contributions to
free software and are people who came in through that program. We’re
seeing increasing success in growing diversity in free software, and I
think this matters.

We decided to apply for a mentoring organization for OPW at last
minute. Unlike GSOC where there’s funding that comes as part of the
project, funding doesn’t necessarily come with OPW participation. We
haven’t found external funding, so we’re at present planning on this
money to come out of the MediaGoblin campaign fund. Since that fund
mostly goes to support my own salary, in a sense, this is a personal
hit, but I believe it’s worth it.

In fact, it was my spouse, Morgan Lemmer-Webber, who convinced me
we needed to join the program regardless of the funding situation. Morgan tutors high school
students in foreign languages as part of her funding for grad school.
Recently one of the young women she was tutoring told her that she had
joined an engineering class, was really enjoying it, but dropped out
because she felt uncomfortable being the only woman in the class. The
woman explained that nobody had been impolite to her, in fact the
other students seemed happy to have her there, but despite this and
really enjoying the material, it was difficult for her to be there
because she felt socially uncomfortable.

I think we’ve had the same issue in free software for some time,
but happily this is changing. Outreach programs like OPW and
continued work on things like
OpenHatch’s Open Source
Comes to Campus and its emphasis on diversity as well as increased
attention to diversity issues at conferences and et cetera are helping
to make these places more welcoming. (I’ve been convinced of this
since I saw Lenore Blum speak on their success in increasing the
participation of women in CS at Carnegie Mellon, which
increased
its enrolling female students in CS from 7% to 38% five years
using similar strategies.) It’s important to me that MediaGoblin is
taking part in helping to make this change.

Anyway, if you are interested in helping to make up the
difference and this strikes a chord with you, the
campaign
is no longer really running, but you can still
donate!

All that said above, the really important thing of course is that
we’re participating in these programs. If you’re considering applying
to either program: please do so, and come by
and introduce
yourself! (Especially on IRC!)